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Comment by Zardoz84 | Hacker News Reader

> Fascinating! To me this sounds like the mother's body is trying to "nudge" the odds towards a daughter after several sons, but sometimes the process "fails" and produces an effeminate male instead - a gay son.

You know that a homosexual not are "effeminate males" ? Man, try to revise these stereotype that you have.

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I'm not sure the parent comment meant effeminate in demeanor. There is some indication that the brains of homosexual men have some similarities to female brains[1]. The GP's speculation doesn't need to rely on "stereotypes" to describe the homosexual male brain as closer to (heterosexual) female than the heterosexual male brain.

[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/study-says-brains...

'Effeminate' is an adjective of demeanor.

That's fair. I suppose I just find it plausible that the parent commenter made a minor misnomer between feminine and effeminate, instead of jumping to conclusions about stereotyping. But I know I usually have a terminal case of being too charitable, so maybe this is just a blind spot for me.

Edit: apparently my assumption was correct, per the commenter in question elsewhere in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26076929

lol @ all these comments immediately jumping to stereotypes. My English is great but it's not my first language. What's the right word here? Feminine? "More female in brain structure"?

I’d say there is no “right word” at the moment, and the topic is a euphemism treadmill because, as with so many other disenfranchised groups, social norms have not yet universally settled onto “that’s fine, no seriously it’s fine”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphemism#Euphemism_treadmill

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